Roulette is one of oldest and most popular games in the gambling industry. Its origins can be traced back to Ancient Rome, when soldiers used their shields for entertainment by swinging a spear over them. Then came Blaise Pascal: the well-known mathematician, in fact, attempted to demonstrate perpetual motion by creating a machine which today is considered to be the first ancestor of roulette. However, currently this game represents and continues to represent gambling, and this is also true in more modern forms of gambling.
The history of roulette: it starts from the ancient Roman empire
It is said that the first to invent a game similar to roulette were the Roman soldiers. At the time, in fact, the soldiers they swung a spear above their shields, betting with each other on the direction indicated by the tip. Then, still in Rome, the game reached its evolution: the shields were replaced by the wheel of a chariot, positioned horizontally, while the spear was replaced by an arrow. In this particular version, each wedge of the wheel - which was divided into various sections by its rays - represented a sector, and the legionnaires bet in turn.
The legend of the birth of roulette may be even older, e go back to the Chinese empirebut there is no concrete evidence to that effect. Consequently, the so-called "rota fortunae" of the Roman soldiers is considered, to this day, as the very first "official" version of roulette. The logic of the sectors and segments continues to represent the soul of this game which, among other things, we can also find in a digital version, thanks to the online casino. Yet, the "father" of roulette is another: we are talking about the mathematician Blaise Pascal, who deserves a separate chapter.
Blaise Pascal, perpetual motion and the invention of roulette
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and philosopher who lived in the 600s. It was he who invented the first prototype of "modern" roulette, although his purposes were not recreational. His car, in fact, was built with the aim of testing the perpetual motion theory. To test this hypothesis, Pascal created a device that rotated around an axis, with several independent sectors, trying to imitate the movement of celestial bodies. Despite the charm of the attempt, the well-known French philosopher and mathematician failed to achieve his goal, that is a machine capable of feeding itself with its rotation alone. On the other hand, he ended up giving life to a game that-over the centuries-would have made the history of gambling.
From Pascal to the present day: the evolution of roulette continues
In reality there are also theories according to which modern roulette was born before Pascal, precisely in Italy in 1500, but even in this case we are talking about a theory that is difficult to prove. What we do know, however, is that it was Francoise Blanc the first to introduce roulette to the world of gambling. This happened in 1843, but - once again - it was not an invention, but rather a modern reinterpretation.
